There's the old
Bun. He's been offended over and over again because people told him he
was so fat. He can't see it, sir."

"Oh, he must," cried Rodd, laughing.

"There aren't no must in it, sir. He can't. He might find it out
perhaps if he tried to get into a pair of boy's trousers--yours, for
instance; but then that aren't likely, because you won't give him the
chance, and what's more, he wouldn't want to. You try him some day
about being too fat, and you see if he don't stare at you."

"He will, Joe, when I'm so rude to him. But come now, you are
shuffling. Why is it that you laugh at me?"

"Well, sir, because I like you, for one thing, and another is because
you are such an unreasonable chap."

"I? Unreasonable?" cried Rodd hotly. "That I'm sure I'm not!"

"Why, sir, wasn't you put out because your uncle and the old man
wouldn't sail right into the Mediterranean Sea?"

"Well, there was nothing unreasonable in that. I am sure it would have
been very interesting."

"Not it, sir. I've been there over and over again, and it always seemed
to me just like any other sea, only a bit rougher sometimes, and it
aren't got hardly any tide. You wait till we get a little further on,
and you'll find plenty to make you open you eyes wider than ever you
opened them before. I don't know a finer place for seeing wonders of
the deep than along where we are going, as you say we are to, right
along the West Coast of Afriky. Why, you might begin fishing and
dredging directly after we had put in at Mogador, where the fish are
wonderful, and you can't drop in a line without hauling something out."

"That's good," cried Rodd eagerly; "but I am afraid uncle won't let us
have much time for ordinary fishing. He will be more on the look-out
for curiosities."

"Ah, well, there's plenty of them too, sir--all sorts, and the farther
you gets into warmer water the more there are."

"What sort?" asked Rodd.

"All sorts, and the nearer you are to land the more you get. Then I
suppose some time we shall come upon that there Sargassey Sea."

"Where's that?" asked Rodd.

"Right away down south, sir. Let's see, if I remember right we falls in
with that soon after you pass the islands."

"What islands?"

"Let's see; I ought to know, sir. The fust that comes near Europe is
the Azores; then farther south there's that there island where all the
sick people goes, Madeiry; then there's the Canaries, where the birds
come fr